Goodbye Eastern Market, Baseball Dates, and The Mysterious Rage Disease

Anyone who knows Dan and I knows that we were great fans of Eastern Market, the farmer’s market and flea market space just north of Pennsylvania Ave., the main building of which burned early this morning. Since the first month we lived here, most of our weekend plans have included breakfast and browsing there, and we are both deeply dismayed by the loss of this national treasure, a 207-year-old building on Capitol Hill that was designated as market space by President Thomas Jefferson. It is our most fervent desire to see it rebuilt.

Went to the Mets / Nats game Sunday afternoon. At one point, I asked Dan if we had accidentally taken the Metro to Shea Stadium instead of RFK, based on the mobs of rabid Mets fans.

Am I crazy, or are there some excessively sorry-looking first dates clearly taking place at Mets games? By sorry-looking, I mean: guy with artsy-looking haircut and man-clogs, girl with artsy-looking haircut, denim miniskirt and Uggs, carefully not touching each other. Not that, you know, there’s anything wrong with a first date at a baseball game—in fact, that’s the kind of first date I could really get on board with. But most of the spectators at yesterday’s games were comprised of:

--Sorry-looking first dates, as detailed above.
--Youngish, white yuppie families .
--Guys in Mets t-shirts with slicked-back hair, smoking clove cigarettes on the concourse and looking like they were auditioning for extras on an episode of “The Sopranos.”
--The guy sitting in front of me who, inexplicably, smelled like meat.

Guess which one we were.

By far, the best part of the game: a guy who Dan and I have begun referring to as “Superfan.” He was around 40, wearing a red Nationals baseball cap that was heavily crusted with dried sweat, sitting a couple of rows in front of us, over right field, and throughout the game, he literally screamed at Austin Kearns, the Nationals’ right-fielder. “A.K.! A.K.! UP HERE! TWO-FIVE!!! A.K.!” Dan and I were both waiting to see Superfan burst into tears, scream, “AUSTIN! I LOVE YOU, AUSTIN! I LOVE YOU!” and throw his sweaty underpants out onto the field. Finally, around the eighth inning, Austin finally looked up and threw his practice ball up to Superfan. And for one horrible second, I experienced pure terror as a major-league-thrown baseball came flying toward the skull of my sleeping toddler in my arms, and I had no extra hand with which to deflect this ball, as it occurred to me that Superfan could be insane, or looking away, or in some other way incapable of catching this ball.

But he wasn’t. And he caught it. And Max kept sleeping. But if we have our choice, in the future, I hope to always sit near Superfan, because damn, what a big ol’ sack of fun times he turned out to be.

Congrats to Max’s god(ess)mama, whose head, spinal cord, and various other bits passed their semi-annual examination with (mostly) flying colors last week. Keep your chin up, kiddo, the bad stuff will be over before you know it, and you have something great to look forward to. And you have The Mysterious Rage Disease. I wonder if we could convince your world-class neurosurgeon to refer to it as such from now on. Because, you know, I think this would make it one hundred percent more awesome.

Although I know nobody cares about my dreams, I have to tell about this seriously weirdo one that Dan had last night. He has the most surreal dreams of anyone I know, but this takes the cake: our family was being pursued and abducted by large, breaded, rectangular chicken planks. Do I have no imagination at all? My dreams, with the exception of the lesbian sex dreams, are always of things that could actually happen.